Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

vmotion

Storage VMotion and moving to a Thin Provisioned disk

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I was just reading this article by Vladan about Storage VMotion. He explains how you can get your unused disk space back with Storage VMotion and moving to a Thin Provisioned disk at the same time. I agree that this is one of the best new features out there. It’s easy and effective.

However, you will need to keep in mind that although it seems like disk space is not used according to the Guest OS it might have been used in the past. (An OS usually only removes the pointer to the data and not the actual data itself.) If you d0 not zero out your disk before you do the Storage VMotion and migration to a thin provisioned disk you will be copying all the “filled” blocks. This is actually the same concept as for instance a VCB full image dump, which I addressed in the beginning of 2008.

So for optimizing migrations to Thin Provisioned disks either use sdelete by Microsoft/Sysinternals or use the “shrink” option within VMware tools. Both work fine, but keep in mind they can be time consuming. You could use sdelete to script the solution and actually zero-out every disk once a week.

vWire Opscheck

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As it seems Tripwire is preparing a new toolkit. Opscheck is the first of more to come that has been released.

Tripwire created a new website / community called vWire. They moved Configcheck over to vWire and added Opscheck to the list. Where Configcheck identifies possible security vulnerabilities and Opscheck checks for VMware VMotion support by rapidly analyzing ESX 3.0, 3.5, and ESXi hypervisors.

The next thing to expect from Tripwire, euuhm vWire, euuuh… vWire Solution. You can sign up for the announcement at the vWire website.

Enable VMotion from the command-line

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Just had a chat with someone on-line about a scripted install, as of ESX 3.5 the way to enable VMotion via the command-line changed. So for anyone looking for this particular command:

/usr/bin/vmware-vim-cmd "hostsvc/vmotion/vnic_set vmk0"

In this example “vmk0” is the first vmkernel. This is one of the things that changed, so no portgroup id’s anymore. And if you need to do anything via the command-line that doesn’t seem to be possible with the normal commands: vmware-vim-cmd. Definitely the way to go.

VMware CPU Host Info

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Richard Garsthagen managed to find some spare time and update his ESX Host CPU info tool:

Interested in knowing if all your physical ESX servers are the same? VMware CPU Host Info will help you find out. The application gathers the important system information from your hosts and puts this in one single overview.

The program will tell you if your servers are VT capable and more important if this feature is turned on. I have found that on most my servers, this feature is disabled in the BIOS.

At some point in time VMware will provide a new cool feature called FT, this ‘Fault Tolerant’ feature will only work with the latest processors. This program will also let you know if your processors are new enough 🙂 (you have to have harpertown or above).

At the Login screen just provide your username, password and the IP/DNS of your Virtual Center. After the login, the program will collect from all hosts the Vendor, Model, CPU Types and the CPU feature bits.

You can connect the tool to multiple VC’s at the same time and it will report useful info like CPU Type and Features which might be handy if you’ve got a dozen of hosts and you want to create clusters based on VMotion compatibility. And as you can see in the screenshot below it also detects if you’re hosts are Fault Tolerance compatible. Visit his blog and pick it up.

Let’s hope Richard can keep finding time to do cool stuff like this or to blog on a more regular base again!

Update: Symantec and VMotion, Supported or not?

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There has been a lot of hassle on this one over the last couple of days. Symantec wasn’t supporting VMotion for their anti-virus suite. (Mike D., Lone SysAdmin, VInternals)A little birdie just told me that the article has been updated:

Is VMware VMotion ESX server supported with Symantec AntiVirus and Symantec Endpoint Protection?

Symptoms:
Symantec supports running Symantec AntiVirus, Symantec Endpoint Protection, and Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager in VMware environments.

A few customers have reported problems with Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager with VMware VMotion ESX server. These problems may or may not be related to the presence of VMware VMotion or the presence of the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager.

Some the problems include:

  • Client communication problems
  • Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager communication problems
  • Content update failures
  • Policy update failures
  • Client data does not appear in the database
  • Replication failures


Solution:
Symantec is investigating each support case and will update Symantec products where necessary. If you experience a problem that you suspect is related to VMware VMotion, please contact Symantec Technical Support.

So in short, there have been problems which might or might not have been related to VMotion or Symantec EPM. Symantec will support products running in a VMware Environment!